WE’RE BACK…AND WE BROUGHT THE BOSS!

Summary

In our second episode Bryan, Karen, and Micah talk about…

• evolutionary new Gig/Gig pricing, global supply chain issues, fiber build updates, and annual meeting info with BLC GM/CEO Greg Smartt,
• deep dive into the dual-band, Wi-Fi 6 GigaSpire Blast router and GigaMesh Extenders.
• hat’s happening in the new BLC Connection magazine, Channel 6, and area events.
• and much more!

Show Notes

Transcript

Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Bryan Kell: Welcome to the BLC Connection Podcast. I’m Bryan Kell.

Karen Wilson: I’m Karen Wilson.

Micah Lawrence: And I’m Michael Lawrence.

All Hosts: Let’s get connected!

Bryan Kell: We’re back. Everybody decided to come back now that it’s the second episode, so we didn’t lose anybody. Karen, Micah.

Karen Wilson: Yeah, I hope we gained a few people.

Micah Lawrence: I’m still here.

Karen Wilson: We came back. I hope the audience came back as well.

Bryan Kell: Yes, yes. Well, hey, listen, we have got a lot in this second episode of the BLC Connection Podcast. We welcome you, the listener, no matter how you’re listening to us, and we’re going to talk about all the different ways that folks can catch it later in this podcast. But in this episode, we have so many things. We’ve got Karen, some information about the GigaSpire BLAST router.

Karen Wilson: Yeah, that’s going to be very informational. It sounds very high tech, and it is. But it’s something that we need in our homes, and we’re going to dive into what that is and how it helps us.

Bryan Kell: Yeah. Micah, we’ve also got information on what’s going on in so many different things as well, right?

Micah Lawrence: Yeah. We’re going to take a look at some what’s coming up in the March/April Connect Magazine and then what’s going on at Channel 6. Maybe some area events. It’s going to be great.

Bryan Kell: Yeah, and also up next, we’ve got the big guy himself, the seventh general manager and CEO of Ben Lomand Connect, Greg Smartt. All that and so much more on the BLC Connection Podcast.

Bryan Kell: Welcome back. Karen Wilson has slid out, and we have put in her place the seventh GM/CEO of Ben Lomand Connect, Greg Smartt. Greg, welcome in to the BLC Connection Podcast.

Greg Smartt: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Bryan Kell: Glad to have you here.

Greg Smartt: I’m glad to be here.

Bryan Kell: Yeah, yeah, so. Well, first of all, before we start getting to this, it was weird how you were thinking, Karen and I were thinking, that podcasting is something that that Ben Lomand should get into. And so I guess we thank you for allowing us to be able to do this.

Greg Smartt: Oh, absolutely. It seemed like everybody was getting into it. And I thought, what a way to reach some of the customer base that we may be missing out on. So I love this setup. It’s really nice.

Bryan Kell: Yeah, well cool. Thanks to you for allowing us to be able to do this.

Greg Smartt: Oh absolutely.

Bryan Kell: Well, by the time this podcast gets out, it will be one year of you at the reins of Ben Lomand Connect. It’s been a busy year, but tell us about one year.

Greg Smartt: Well, we’ve accomplished so much in the year, in the last year here and…

Bryan Kell: Quite a lot of milestones.

Greg Smartt: Bryan, I can’t cover them all in one hour, but there were several things that we accomplished that I was really proud of. One of the biggest ones was email conversions, and the team got around that and really worked through that.

Bryan Kell: Kind of with the old BLomand to Ben Lomand, conversion right?

Greg Smartt: Absolutely, yes, we went through about 20,000 of those email accounts.

Micah Lawrence: That’s a lot.

Greg Smartt: That’s a lot and went through them in a short period of time. Because we had several things going on at the same time. We are focused on trying to get out the the fastest speed at the cheapest price. And so in the time that we were doing all of this, I came up with this brilliant idea that we would serve all of our members with fiber optic with a gig up / gig down.

Bryan Kell: For?

Greg Smartt: $57.95. And that’s business and residential. So this way it helps the customer service reps and the tech guys that are out there on the road. We got one price, one speed. But we met once a week. We come up with a game plan and until the projects were done, we met once a week to make sure that we stayed on track. And I just can’t talk about how the employees pulled together to make that happen.

Bryan Kell: Oh, and if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s fair to say that, especially if you’re listening to it before our annual meeting and Greg’s going to talk more about that, this may be the first time that you’ve heard us mention that in some kind of a public forum kind of situation. So if you’re on fiber, if you didn’t know it or you haven’t checked or anything like that, if you’re a fiber customer of ours and you are maybe not on — there’s some old speeds that are still sitting out there. But if you’ve been with Ben Lomand, it’s safe to say over the last five to seven years and you’re on fiber, it is safe to say, Greg, they are sitting on a gig right now.

Greg Smartt: They are sitting on a gig down and a gig up. That’s the key part of this. The upload speed. The upload speeds plays such a big importance in the day’s technology and how everything is being driven as far as home and things like that, the things that we do at home. So yes, the gig download speed, you may hear some of that in the future coming up, but the upload speed is unbelievable. You just don’t hear of that. And so we’ve got some more things coming down the pipe for new technology, and I know we’ll get to that. But I am very proud of this group of Ben Lomand people to come up with the idea, and this was this was come up by the group of managers to come up with a gig up / gig down for $57.95.